


it itches more than it stings

by slytherpvff



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Blades, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Knifeplay, Mr. Robot Season 3, Scarification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 04:55:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20384017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slytherpvff/pseuds/slytherpvff
Summary: Irving gets his beauty mark renewed by Hers Truly: this time, it’s because of a job well done.





	it itches more than it stings

**Author's Note:**

> first fic i’ve posted here, hope you like it! please mind the tags and stay safe.  
find more irv at mrf34r on tumblr.

It’s a ceremony they go through on occasion. Only when necessary, sure— but Her version of necessary usually differs greatly from his. He goes along with it, always, since most of his job consists of proving that he’ll remain loyal and go along with whatever She deems is best, but this... Well, at least he’s gotten used to it over the years.

She kisses his forehead this time, which is sweet, and he doesn’t even say anything as he pulls his dress shirt up from his slacks, undoes his belt, and lets his slacks fall to the floor. Steps out of them, having already untied and removed his loafers by the front door to this, one of her lavish flats in Expensivesville, China. The mansion is more heavily guarded, but also more heavily watched. She always dresses up there in private, it isn’t new, but renewing his beauty mark is something she doesn’t want anyone to walk in on. Understandably.

Dressed in his briefs, now, he removes his earpiece after getting rid of the most necessary article of clothing for this, sets his Bluetooth down on the shiny, obsidian-dark dining room table. Has a seat on her plush, white velvet dining room chair. She’s on her knees with that sorrowful smile of hers, the one she usually saves for when she‘s disappointed in him.

But this is an olive branch type of deal, a good thing. Not a reminder of his place. She must just feel sorry that she’s the one having to renew it. She has steady hands but her knifework hasn’t ever been the cleanest.

“I’ll be as efficient as I can be,” she purrs. He has it in him to shrug. He feels alien without his earpiece.

“You know pain doesn’t bother me.”

Her hand moves up to gently cradle his left knee, smoothing her palm up his thigh. Over her beauty mark. He isn’t even turned on by it like usual. The plane ride over had been killer. Gross entrees and movies he didn’t even care to watch. He’d mostly slept. She hadn’t even wanted to come to New York for this. This was routine and nothing more.

The blade glints in her hand, small, triangular, and elegant— not too different from the lady herself. He reaches up and readjusts his wide, golden, browline glasses.

“S’good to see you again,” he says.

“Don’t feel you need to fill the silence for me. I’m perfectly content for us to have this moment go undisturbed.”

Undisturbed, that is, except for the ticking of the clock on the wall and the way her damned watch beeps at every new 60 seconds that pass them by. He smiles down at her and doesn’t say anything else. His hands steady where his arms are crossed over the back of the dining room chair, looking down at her kneeling just beside him.

He realizes she’s stalling, just for some reason admiring the hairs on his thigh and brushing her long nails lightly along his skin. Maybe she’s trying to get him into it, a little. He  _ does _ have a weakness for knifeplay, but she already knew he didn’t need to get kinky to get off with her. He did whatever she asked, anyways.

Another glint along the metal as she angles the blade toward his thigh. Faint marks already reside there, traced over and over again throughout the years. He was one of the first she’d marked this way, and he was honestly a little humbled by that fact. They went back further than most outsiders realized—further, even, than he usually remembered.

It itches more than it stings. Her Cupid’s bow upper lip parts away from her bottom one in a soft, inquisitive little chasm, lipstick bright against the skin-tone matched foundation pressed lightly into her skin. He didn’t know why she even bothered with that stuff, since the lipstick and eye-stuff did the trick, in his opinion, but he always complimented her on it all the same.

Down the line of one petal, around the corner and onto another. Only seven more to go, plus either leaf off to the right side of it. His left. A rose carved delicately into his skin, raised and lighter than the skin around it. A white rose.

A promise, a dogtag, a threat, and a warning all in one cute tattoo no bigger than 8 or so square inches. He’s never cared to measure it, and honestly, he wouldn’t be surprised if it’d stretched and grown over the years. It’s certainly raised up just a little more with each renewal.

“I could add a third leaf,” she muses into the silence. Her watch beeps softly. Three whole minutes spent with her so far. Maybe she’d ask him to spend the night, at this point.

“If you want to.” Amicable as always. “Probably wouldn’t make it look  _ too _ uneven, huh?”

She cleans up the little red line running down his leg where it had pooled and spilled down, his own private Red Sea crashing against the beaches. It itches more than it stings. Just itches.

“I would hate to make it uneven, that’s true.” Her nail presses carefully along the outer edge she’s made. Sometimes she goes from the outside in, like now, or the inside out, like last time, and sometimes she goes one petal at a time. Sometimes she has somebody else do it. But with her, it hardly ever hurts. It just—

“Where are you?”

He looks up and meets her gaze with a soft, “hm?” Blinks his eyes and smiles slowly. “I’m here with you.”

She wipes the blade off on an expensive-looking tea towel. It’s just as red as his sea.

“You know I appreciate your ability to weave fiction into fact, but I  _ very _ much don’t appreciate when you try to tell me one of your stories.” She goes back to it. The little line detailing in one of the leaves. More sea. He wonders faintly—not worries, only wonders—if she’ll carve away a piece of skin completely by accident again.

He tilts his head. “Just brings back memories.”

“Good ones?”

“Oh, y’know. All sorts.” He shifts his opposite leg and is careful not to move the one she’s working at. It itches more than it— “Last time. The time before that, especially. Since that was when you—“

“Yes, when we relaxed together.”

Something warm fills up his chest. It isn’t any sort of emotion. It might have been bile, honestly, but he’s so detached from the present moment that he isn’t quite sure what it is. He doesn’t  _ feel _ ill. Just tired, mostly.

“It was pretty relaxing for  _ me _ ,” he says.

“For me, as well.” Another watch beep. It can’t have been the most recent one since the last one he’d heard. He must have missed a few in between. That happens, sometimes.

She’s quiet, finishing up the last details on the innermost rose petals before wiping his skin clear with that towel again.

“Would you like us to relax together again?”

Her gaze is coy, but knowing and hard as always. Tested and tried. It’s a gaze that brooks  _ very _ little argument.

“If you’re offering, sweetheart, there’s not a chance in hell I’d turn that down.” He tilts his foot to better see his thigh, eyeing her handiwork. “I’d be a shame for me to bleed all over your nice sheets, though.”

“I’ll bandage you.” She stands, measured, as her watch beeps again. He can only just see her knees beneath her silky nightgown, speckled with indentations from the carpet. They’d both suffered for this. “And then we can get started.”


End file.
